Daily inspiration: Shana Tova (let it be a good year)

This feature, coordinated by The Post-Standard and InterFaith Works of Central New York, provides daily inspiration and reflection from religious and spiritual leaders and faithful followers in our community. Each Sunday, a new writer will offer his or her perspective, followed by daily reflections Monday through Saturday on Page 2 of the CNY section. We welcome your feedback or involvement; email features@syracuse.com for more information.

By Rabbi Charles Sherman
Contributing writer

Rabbi Charles Sherman

"Happy New Year" is not exactly the way Jews greet each other on Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of our New Year. We prefer "Shana Tova," or "let it be a good year." There is a difference between happiness and goodness. Happiness is ephemeral; goodness sustains us during life's better times and painful times.

I remember reading about a man who, every day, would visit his wife of 57 years in a nursing home. The man's wife suffered from Alzheimer's disease. He would arrive in the early morning and stay throughout the day, taking each meal with her even when the nursing home staff encouraged him to go home and get some rest. After some time, she could no longer recognize him; she thought her husband was her father, and then her brother. She could not engage in any thoughtful conversation. And people would ask him, "Why do you do it? Why do you keep on going, even when she does not even know who you are?" His answer: "Because I know who I am."

What happens to us, no matter how hurtful or unfair, is ultimately less important than what we do about what happens to us. It may be that instead of giving us a friendly world that would never challenge us, God gives us a world that inevitably breaks our hearts. But He compensates for this, by planting in our soul the gifts of goodness, resilience, generosity, selflessness and relationship.

Viktor Frankl was a prominent psychiatrist in Vienna when Nazi Germany absorbed Austria in March 1938. And because he was a Jew, he was sent to Auschwitz. He was fortunate to survive. Years later, reflecting on his life and that wartime experience, Frankl wrote a beautiful book, "Man's Search for Meaning." In the book, Frankl shares a message that is both timeless and universal: "Everything can be taken from a man but the last of human freedoms, the right to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."
Rabbi Charles Sherman, Temple Adath Yeshurun, is author of a forthcoming memoir, "If I Knew Then" (Scribner Publishing).